For many of us with home computers, broadband and
wireless connections have changed the way we use the Internet at home. Anyone
who's transitioned from dial-up will rejoice in high-speed access and the
convenience of always being connected. But with these conveniences comes
increased vulnerability to hacking, viruses and identity theft. Joining us to
talk through just how big a risk there is and what we as computer users can do
to protect ourselves is Boston Globe technology writer Hiawatha Bray.

Welcome.

Mr. HIAWATHA BRAY (The Boston Globe): Hello there.

BLOCK: First, let's talk a little bit about how many
people are at risk. How many people are now using broadband or wireless
connections?

Mr. BRAY: Well, it sort of snuck up on us. People were
saying that broadband was catching on rather slowly in the US, and then we woke
up one day and found that 40 million Americans have it already.

BLOCK: And this is 40 million people at home. You're
not counting at work.

Mr. BRAY: That's right. That's right. And suddenly,
these 40 million people--and many of them don't realize this. They turn these
things on, they plug them in and suddenly they have to become network system
administrators with a development of some kind of expertise in computer
security that they've even had to think about before, and a lot of them still
aren't. And that can be scary.

BLOCK: Why is this scary? What are the risks that
users are facing?

Mr. BRAY: Well, everybody knows stories about how
hackers in some distant city or some distant country break into the computers
of a university and use that as the jumping-off point for attacking many other
computers. They're able to do this partly because these computers are on
high-speed connections and they're on all the time. It used to be that that
wasn't the case with home Internet users. Now with broadband connections,
you've got at least 40 million people in America who have a computer at their
home that's connected at high speed to the Internet all the time. That makes
them a prime target.

Then on top of that, a growing number of them are
using wireless connections, so that they can use their laptop in any room of
the house. That means anybody within about 300 feet of their home can just walk
past with a laptop or even a handheld device and log on to their network.

BLOCK: Log on to their network and then--What could
happen if they did?

Mr. BRAY: Well, it depends on just how careless
they've been. I mean, for example, you have the possibility that they've got
file sharing set up on their home computer. You can set it up so that another
computer connected to it can read files on the machine. But if you don't have
those file shares set up with a password, anybody who gets on the network can
read those files, as well. You've got to be careful about that.

BLOCK: Well, what are some of the things, either
through software or through hardware, that consumers should be paying attention
to and using at home to protect themselves?

Mr. BRAY: Well, it's kind of funny because there are
many things you can do, but all of a sudden you start giving people these long
lists of things they have to remember. You end up having to do things like
putting a firewall on all the machines. If you have multiple machines at home,
you need to have multiple firewalls on each one. There are products that you
can buy for about $40 that are firewall software. You can download for
PCs--there's one that's free called ZoneAlarm. There are built-in firewalls in
Microsoft Windows XP and in Apple's OS X for the Macintosh.

BLOCK: And the firewall is designed to do what
exactly, Hiawatha?

Mr. BRAY: Well, a couple of things. First of all, it's
designed to detect certain attempts to use resources on your computer from
outside that people shouldn't be using. Like, there's a resource known as
Telnet. A firewall might say, `Any messages that try to talk to Telnet are
blocked, period.' Another thing that a good firewall does, by the way, is it
stops your computer from talking to other people's because there are some
viruses and worms that we've heard about that get onto your computer and then
start sending out messages from your computer to attack other machines. Now a
good firewall will see that and say, `Hey, there's this strange program on your
machine that's trying to talk to somebody else. Don't let it do that.'

There are really absolutely essential things to have,
but there are lots of other things, and I want to mention one just very
briefly. A lot of people have these wireless devices. Every one of them comes
out of the box with a predetermined password. Everybody out there in the world
of computer bad guys knows what it is. If you've got a wireless router, first
thing you do: put in your own password; otherwise, you're wide open.

BLOCK: You know, listening to this--I mean, high-speed
and wireless connections are supposed to make our lives easier. It sounds like
the way you're describing it people might be thinking, `You know, this just
sounds like more work than it's worth.'

Mr. BRAY: Well, it does make your life easier. It also
makes the lives of bad guys easier. All of a sudden, they don't have to plug
into a wire to gain access to your network. They just have to turn on their own
machine and start sniffing the air and picking up your data transmissions. It
adds a new layer of insecurity, yeah.